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Welcome! Artfully Musing is a blog dedicated to sharing art and the techniques and products used. I'll be showcasing collage, altered and mixed media art as well as miniature. I hope you'll check back often and are inspired. Thanks for visiting! Laura

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Welcome back to the house on Irongate Street. Looks like Helena has made more improvements.

An absolute necessity is the spiralstaircase going from the first to the second floor.

It starts inside the first floor and
spirals up to the front of the second. The staircase design is versatile and can be used outside of the house (as in this example) or inside the house by cutting an opening in the ceiling. For this project, I chose to located the staircase on the outside so that I would have more room for furniture.

The staircase has beautiful fretwork
details. The good news is that it’s akit, yeah for kits!

And for those who need a staircase for a different project, there is an add-on stair kit with extra steps that can be use to extend the staircase or add your own dowel and build a shorter staircase. There is so much flexibility with these kits. In future projects I’ll be remaking this staircase, demonstrating other styles and railing options (this isn't the only house I will be building).

Upstairs you’ll find a lovely lighted
chandelier. Helena thought the room
needed some bling and this chandelier fits the bill. Notice how the light casts shadows on the ceiling.

You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to
make. I used two different sized rings
(an earring and a key chain ring) connected with chain. Hung on each ring are lots of 1
inch glass bugle beads. The light
comes from two sets of mini
fairly lights. There is a hole in
the ceiling where the strings of lights are inserted through a plastic straw
down in to the chandelier. The roof
hides the batteries and switch, allowing for easy access in turning the lights
on and off. But don’t worry; in the
video tutorial I’ll walk you through the assembly.

Out on the balcony is Helena’s spy scope,
a necessity for any explorer. Again I
have used one of my favorite construction materials, various sizes of plastic
straws; yep, the scope and legs are made from straws.

The cool rusted platform is made from Finnabair Mechanical Metals sets. They come pre-rusted and various shapes. You’re going to see me use these repeatedly in future projects. In this project I also used them for the base of the staircase.

One of the Finnabair
wheels and brass fluted
dangles are used for controls and a bronze
flourish (folded) is used to connect the scope to the base.

When you first saw the house you might
have wondered, “how in the world do you get up to the balcony”. In the video I’ll show you how to build a
custom set of steps. I’ve included the
template (at the bottom of the post).

You might have noticed at the end of the
last project post I indicated that decorating the second floor would be the
next post. For timing reasons I decide
to flip the posts and deal with the staircase, chandelier etc. first and the
next post (I promise) will be decorating the second floor. Besides, there is no way to get up there
without a staircase.

Below you'll find the video tutorial, link to a picture gallery, the balcony step template and the complete supply list.

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